Filed late Tuesday in state Supreme Court in Albany County, the lawsuit by Protect the Adirondacks and the Sierra Club seeks to overturn APA's January approval of the Adirondack Resort & Club project in Tupper Lake.

Among those behind the lawsuit are two former state officials whose lineage goes back to the creation of DEC and APA, setting the stage for a legal showdown between those who helped to first protect the 6-million-acre Adirondack Park and those who are now responsible for it.

"This project was greased for approval by the executive staff," said Bob Glennon, a lawyer with Protect the Adirondacks and a former APA director from 1988 to 1995 who worked for six different APA chairmen. He later worked for the state attorney general's office.

"We are concerned that the executive staff may have been too deferential to the developer, but we are not going to speculate on whether that came from directions from above," said Glennon. "It is now up to Gov. Cuomo, who has often visited the Adirondacks with his family, and who has proven he can get things done in Albany, to give the agency a badly needed backbone implant.

"We expect that we will get a fairer shake from the courts than from the APA," he added.

Another member of Protect the Adirondacks and the Sierra Club is Charlie Morrison, a former top aide to the first DEC commissioner, Henry Diamond. "The APA failed to protect the backcountry," said Morrison. "This project is just sprawl on steroids, the worst ever to hit the Adirondacks."

Nearby Tupper Lake landowners Phyllis Thompson and Robert and Leslie Harrison also joined the lawsuit, which is due back in state Supreme Court in Albany on May 11.

The 6,200-acre resort project calls for about 700 new homes, 29 luxurious so-called "great camps" on large forest tracts, a 60-room inn, and miles of new roads, plus sewer and water lines.

The nearby Tupper ski mountain would be redeveloped, along with a lakefront marina along Route 30. Developer Michael Foxman spent seven years in APA review prior to the January approval, given by a 10-1 board vote.

DEC spokeswoman Emily DeSantis said the lawsuit was being reviewed and declined further comment.

Local officials in Tupper Lake and Franklin County had pushed the project, saying it would bring jobs to an economically distressed area.

"The board approved this in consideration of the local residents and their need for jobs," said Monroe.

But critics of the APA said it failed to follow its own law, created in 1971 when Gov. Nelson Rockefeller formed the agency to protect the Adirondacks by controlling how privately owned land could be used.

"In the last few years, APA has become a rogue agency that ignores the law for political ends," said John Caffry, lead attorney for Protect the Adirondacks. "Its rubber-stamp approval of this project, the largest ever to come before it, is only the latest example of this unfortunate trend."

The lawsuit charges that the APA violated its Adirondack Park Agency Act in approving the project. One example cited: The project required a wildlife impact study, but the agency approved it without one, despite seeking it four times from the developer. The agency decided that the study could be submitted after the approval.

Another concern cited in the lawsuit is the proposed fragmentation of 4,805 acres of undeveloped forest lands classified as "resource management" into 35 "great camp" lots and 45 smaller lots. Resource management lands are legally described as those "where the need to protect, manage and enhance forest, agricultural, recreational and open space resources is of paramount importance because of overriding natural resource and public considerations,"

The lawsuit also alleges the APA violated its own regulations by allowing undisclosed private meetings between the developer's representatives and APA executive staff.